Strengthen think tank accountability

Every time there is a presidential transition, we are reminded of the power of think tanks, as dozens of administration officials and think tank employees switch jobs.

Consider John Podesta. After serving as President Bill Clinton’s chief of staff, he became a registered lobbyist and president of the Center for American Progress, a major D.C. think tank. He recently co-chaired President Barack Obama’s transition team.

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Fueled by tax-deductible donations and an explosion in philanthropic assets, think tanks have dramatically grown in size and influence during the past 100 years. According to the Government Research Service, U.S. think tanks increased in number from eight in 1910 to 98 in 1960 and 1,106 in 2006. According to Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, the top 25 think tanks were cited 14,790 times during 2007 in major media.

Despite think tanks’ billions of dollars of tax subsidies and considerable power, they have received minimal public scrutiny and are often poorly understood.

Think tanks often portray themselves as being all things to all people. But in fact, many are rife with ethical conflicts.

Originally, think tanks were conceived as “universities without teaching,” with academic and think tank norms essentially identical. Even today, this constitutes think tanks’ primary public persona.

Since the 1970s, however, leading think tanks have become increasingly involved in advocacy, albeit usually indirectly. More recently, nonprofit journalism has become an important think tank activity.

These academic, advocacy and journalistic activities are rife with ethical and legal conflicts, which manifest themselves in double standards for think tank vs. non-think-tank lobbyists, academics and journalists. For example, Obama recently signed an executive order strengthening the ban on the revolving door between the executive branch and the lobbying community. But someone who cashes in his or her executive experience to lobby from a think tank can be exempt because of the quirky think tank lobbying reporting threshold.

To strengthen think tank accountability, the following steps should be taken. First, think tanks should create and publicize ethical guidelines akin to those developed by highly regarded journalistic, academic and government organizations. The guidelines should answer sensitive questions such as what types of lobbying, plagiarism and donor promises will be publicly disclosed or banned.

Second, the government should enhance laws regarding think tanks’ fiduciary responsibilities to the public. The IRS should begin by distinguishing think tanks from other tax-exempt educational institutions by their primary activity (researching and disseminating public policy findings) and primary revenue source (charitable grants, not student tuition). This distinction should be reflected in the Form 990 that think tanks file with the IRS each year to retain their tax-exempt status. The Form 990 should require think tanks — like lobbyists and political candidates — to disclose their donors; the disclosure rules for think tank lobbyists should be subject to at least the same standards as their non-think-tank colleagues, with the resulting lobbying information integrated into a single, easily accessible lobbyist disclosure database. Finally, the Form 990 should require think tanks to acknowledge think tank ethical conflicts and specify how their boards will audit such conflicts.